OHIO RIVER TRAIL COUNCIL

People said, 'Build this [Eliza Furnace] Trail and no one will come' …Now commuters use it every day and families come on weekends to blade and bike and walk.  

—Tom Murphy, Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA

When man invented the bicycle, he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.

—Elizabeth West

Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world. 

—Grant Petersen

Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity.  

—Lord Charles Beresford

Too often, the advocates of trails and linear parks along rights-of-way come up against officials who recognize only one kind of park–the squared-off kind that comes in chunks; and one kind of recreation–the supervised kind known as ‘organized sweating.’ Such officials refuse to acknowledge that there has been a change in US recreation trends, reflected in the phenomenal growth of hiking, biking, and horseback riding… 

—Constance Stallings

We can tie this country together with threads of green that everywhere grant us access to the natural world. 

—President Reagan’s Commission on American Outdoors, Americans and the Outdoors, 1987

Imagine walking out your front door, getting on a bicycle, a horse or simply donning your backpack and within minutes of your home, setting off along a continuous network of recreation corridors that could lead across the country. 

—President Reagan’s Commission on American Outdoors, Americans and the Outdoors, 1987

The completed Great Allegheny Passage will bring in $100 million in tourism dollars. 

—Linda McKenna Boxx, President Allegheny Trail, 2013

Happiness, freedom, exhilaration, self-confidence, assertion, friendships, creative thinking, and physical fitness are gifts my bicycle has wrapped up and tied with a bow for me to unwrap every day! 

—Beth Geohagan

The forgotten outdoorsmen of today are those who like to walk, hike, ride horseback, or bicycle. For them we must have trails as well as highways… I am requesting therefore, that the Secretary of the Interior work with his colleagues in the federal government and with state and local leaders and recommend to me a cooperative program to encourage a national system of trails, building up the more than [one] hundred thousand miles of trails in our National Forests and Parks... In the backcountry we need to copy the great Appalachian Trail in all parts of our country.    

—Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States